“What will President Biden and the Democrats do?” That was the question we raised in these columns a month and a half ago. At the time speculation was being whispered in respect of whether it’s logical, given the polls, for the Democrats to go ahead and nominate President Biden for a second term. That is no longer confined to a  whisper in the wake of the debate at Atlanta, where President Biden was trounced by President Trump.

Even the Democratic press is bristling with headlines about Mr. Biden’s collapse last night. The party is clearly in a pickle. We like the way our Ira Stoll puts it in his overnight column on the debate. “Mr.  Biden,” he writes, “did terribly, but maybe not quite so terribly that it justifies swapping him out at this juncture for another candidate. The other potential candidates all poll worse or the same against Trump.”

Mr. Stoll reckons that if President Obama, First Lady Jill Biden, and Biden adviser Ron Klain were together to go to the President, show him video of the debate lowlights and suggest that he retire for the sake of the country, Mr. Biden might listen. We doubt it, but he might. “The problem with that scenario,” Mr. Stoll notes, “ is that there’s just no obvious strong winning replacement candidate standing on the sidelines.”

It’s not just the lack of a candidate. It’s the question Reagan asked in a debate with President Carter. It will be remembered for generations. “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” Mr. Carter had no answer then, and the Democrats have no answer now. Mr. Trump came back to this point repeatedly last night. His term as president saw low inflation, tax cuts, low interest rates, growth in jobs, rising earnings — and a relatively peaceful world. 

President Biden and the Democrats in Congress have given us surging spending, fueling false optimism on the jobs front, soaring prices — 50 percent or more above the Fed’s 2 percent target for inflation, itself a folly. Americans see this every time they go out for groceries or gas. Democrats boast of a dollar that is strong against, say, European irredeemable electronic paper ticket scrip but that is, in terms of real value — i.e., gold — at its lowest point in history.

Not to mention the catastrophe of President Biden’s foreign policy, a point President Trump kept raising last night. When he left office, we were, by and large, at peace. Under Mr. Biden, far too eager to leave Afghanistan, we surrendered. War broke out in Europe and then in the Middle East and today we appear to be on the brink of a potential world war. What candidate could the Democrats advance who can straighten that out?

President Trump’s best moment was when the moderators raised the question of his “retribution.” It was a reference to this vow. “In 2016,” Trump said last year, “I declared, ‘I am your voice.’ Today, I add: I am your warrior, I am your justice. And for those of you who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.” In the debate last night, Mr. Biden sought to make that sound like a horrible thing to say. 

“Well,” President Trump responded, “I said my retribution is going to be success. We’re going to make this country successful again, because right now it’s a failing nation. My retribution is going to be success.” We take that to mean that he is going to return the economy to a supply-side driven growth strategy with a tight rein on inflation so that earnings beat price rises. It’s not just a replacement candidate the Democrats lack — it’s the policies.